In partnership with the Shakespeare International Festival 2026, GLORIÆ Art Gallery will present a group exhibition bringing together the works created during the first edition of the Shakespeare Visual artist residency. Curated by Gloria Berceanu and Valentin Boiangiu, the exhibition will open on Saturday, May 23, 2026, at 6:00 PM, in the presence of the artists.
Out of 98 proposals submitted through the international open call, seven artists from Romania and abroad were selected: Lena Ciobanu (Romania), Danielle Rosa (Brazil), STOL Collective – Anio Ciutac, Mara Verhoogt, Marco Verhoogt (Romania–Netherlands), Sevan Székely (Romania), and Mircea Cîrtog (Romania). During the residency held in Craiova between May 15–22, the artists developed new works through a creative process directly connected both to the Shakespearean universe and to the city and its community.
The central theme of this year’s edition, WILL matters, is inspired by Prospero’s final speech in The Tempest (“We are such stuff as dreams are made on”). Through the exhibition, the artists explore how Shakespeare’s work continues to generate new images and questions surrounding identity, memory, technology, the body, and imagination. The exhibition will remain open to the public until June 1, 2026.
“For the first edition of the Shakespeare Visual residency, the keywords that guided our selection were adaptation, diversity, and invention. We sought projects that rely on the novelty of public perception and align with the gallery’s contemporary profile, placing strong emphasis on experimentation and innovation. We are confident in our choices and believe that, together with the participating international artists, our efforts will result in a truly compelling exhibition,” state curators Gloria Berceanu and Valentin Boiangiu.
The initiative reflects GLORIÆ Art Gallery’s mission to promote contemporary art and support local and national artists. At the same time, the project responds to the gallery’s objective of diversifying its exhibition program and opening toward the international scene, thus contributing to the repositioning of the city on the cultural map.
As part of the residency, Lena Ciobanu is creating The Pavilion of Dreams, an immersive installation that transforms the gallery pavilion into an organism suspended between reality and fantasy, materializing the inner architecture of dreams within physical space.
Danielle Rosa maps the city through Tempestuous, a photographic research project based on performative self-portraits in which feminine archetypes from The Tempest (Miranda, Sycorax, Claribel) are superimposed onto the urban landscape of Craiova to explore the relationship between the female body and public space.
STOL Collective proposes a mixed-media installation exploring the contemporary relationship with Shakespeare and, more broadly, the notions of theatricality, stage, and life as spectacle. Using various techniques — photography, sculpture, and drawing — the collective creates a map of Shakespearean impressions crystallized within the collective imagination.
Sevan Székely approaches Prospero’s speech from a political perspective on power and illusion, proposing a site-specific installation combining large-scale painting, sound, and light to question the ways contemporary reality is controlled, directed, and colonized through images.
Mircea Cîrtog presents an interactive audio-video installation, The Breath Between Us, which uses a living plant as a biological interface between the viewer and the Shakespearean text. The work translates the visitors’ proximity and breathing into a generative soundscape composed of Shakespearean verses, dissolving the boundaries between nature, technology, and text.
GLORIÆ Art Gallery is located in the historic center of Craiova, at 49 Alexandru Macedonski Street. During the exhibition period, the space can be visited on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, between 12:00 PM and 16:00 PM.
